How A Therapist Traces Relationship Issues Back To Your Brain feature post on DatingAdvice.com

The Short Version: Dr. Sophia Dorton Caudle, a psychotherapist based in North Carolina, has made a career out of diving into people’s heads. She specializes in sex therapy and addiction for all ages. Dr. Sophia gave us some insight into how relationship issues can be traced back to our childhoods, and how we can heal from deeply ingrained bad habits. 

The mind is a mysterious place. I can barely explain what goes on in my own head, let alone what goes through someone else’s. Sometimes, my closest loved ones make decisions that simply baffle me. What were they thinking?! What was thinking?! And while we’re on the subject, how much do our psyches factor into our romantic relationships, anyway?

Most of us run from oncoming conflict, but Dr. Sophia Dorton Caudle of Queen City Healthy Sex and Relationships meets relationship problems head-on. If someone comes to her with a problem of the heart, head, or both, she’s all in — because they’re usually connected.

“I have a strong interest in intimacy and relationships,” she told us. “In my practices, we focus on sex therapy, sex addiction, trauma, grief, mood disorders, and codependency.” But really, Dr. Sophia is passionate about getting to the root cause of any relationship-related problem a couple may be experiencing.

If you want to know a person’s heart, you may have to explore your own brain first, said Dr. Sophia.

Adult Relationship Patterns Are Shaped By Your Past

TV therapists tend to nod, jot down notes, and ask “How does that make you feel?” Expect a more exploratory approach from Dr. Sophia. “We are root cause therapists,” she said of her psychotherapy practices. Root cause therapy is based in the belief that your current mental or emotional problems, such as anxiety or addiction, can be traced back to a trauma from your past.

Let’s say you struggle with sex addiction, are a chronic cheater, enjoy catfishing, or are emotionally unavailable. With the help of a specialized therapist like Dr. Sophia, you can examine the events that led to your current problems, identify the root causes, and finally begin to heal.

“We get to the root cause of everything, which is about attachment and grief,” Dr. Sophia explained. “It’s below trauma. It’s what triggers everything.”

For many people, the root cause of their issues goes all the way back to childhood. Some therapists refer to an early life trauma as one’s “original grief.”

“We’re not finding people who are emotionally unavailable because we are gluttons for punishment,” she said. Instead, we may have deeply ingrained behavioral patterns to thank for our dead-end relationships.

And as you may have guessed, the reason behind these patterns goes back to your childhood.

“When you’re very little, there was something you didn’t get enough of emotionally, and you developed patterns and tools (to cope),” Dr. Sophia explained. For example, if you didn’t get enough attention as a child, you may have realized that crying led to more hugs from your parents. Or as a teenager, the more you rebelled against your mother, the more independent you felt.

You learn to weaponize your emotions, in other words. But when you mirror these behaviors as an adult, other people aren’t necessarily going to respond the way you’re used to. Dissolving into tears for attention or fighting anyone who doesn’t put up with your outbursts doesn’t lead to a healthy relationship.

This is something Dr. Sophia has encountered many times as a psychotherapist. “We’re just taught these really unhelpful patterns from our caregivers, who were emotionally unavailable in their own ways.”

We’ve established how childhood trauma can inform the way we behave as adults. So it isn’t surprising that it can also lead to codependency — at least, at first. “When codependency stops working, we start seeking out other ways of feeling better,” Dr. Sophia said.

Self-soothing feels good in the moment, but it doesn’t address the deeply rooted issue. Plus, self-soothing often takes harmful forms in an effort to, as Dr. Sophia told us, “numb out” our bodies and minds. “Sometimes it can turn into some kind of an addiction.”

You can guess how the story goes from here. Sex, drugs, and alcohol addictions are common “numbing” agents. Dr. Sophia has seen patience self-soothe with all three. We’re not saying psychotherapy can cure addiction, but it can certainly help identify the root cause of addiction.

“We need to become more conscious of (harmful patterns) so we can unlearn them,” Dr. Sophia said. And we can start to unlearn these patterns or habits with the help of EMDR therapy.

The Benefits of EMDR and Alternative Therapy

Dr. Sophia recommends eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) for those who are ready to try this kind of emotional inner work.

Some people think therapy will cure their problems overnight, but this simply isn’t realistic. Dr. Sophia encourages people to seek professional help, but she also wants people to feel empowered enough to do their own self-work at home, and to try alternative therapies if doing so works for them.

“There’s no secret sauce to doing an alternative therapy,” she said. “As a consumer, you just want to look for a therapist who knows how to do more than talk therapy, because then you’re going to move a lot quicker.”

Talk therapy is beneficial, but it doesn’t fit everyone’s lifestyle or personality. EMDR helps the patient come to terms with traumatic moments. “Alternative therapy helps you connect the mind and the body and get into the feelings much quicker and process through it,” Dr. Sophia told us. “It’s all about figuring out how to get in the body and in the feelings.”

If you have trouble setting boundaries for yourself, you probably have trouble setting boundaries in relationships as well. If this resonates with you, Dr. Sophia recommends seeing a directive therapist.

“Leave your therapist and do not look back if they are nodding their head at you and waiting for you to (cure yourself) because that’s actually how most therapists are taught. If we knew how to do that as clients, we wouldn’t need a therapist,” she pointed out.

A directive therapist helps you craft a structured plan for your future that will challenge the habits that aren’t serving you. They’re a present guide — a coach, in a way — who keeps you focused on your relationship goals.

Dr. Sophia’s Unique Dating Plans

Dr. Sophia puts directive therapy in action with her unique dating plan. “I have a top-notch dating plan, and it’s extremely fun, helpful, and organic, which is what dating should be like,” she said.

Dr. Sophia works with clients to map out their individualized dating plans. She finds that keeping a structured plan helps people who struggle in their relationships due to, for example, childhood trauma or sex addiction.

To start, a client chooses whichever method of dating works for them: online, over an app, via speed dates, and so on. “Whatever ways you feel comfortable meeting people, just start doing that, and do not focus on one person,” she suggested. “Date as many people as you can at the same time, and just let people fall away and see the two or three that rise to the top.”

The key is to allow these relationships to happen as organically as possible. If a flirtation never progresses, then let it “fall away,” as Dr. Sophia put it. Instead of trying to control every relationship, let the chips fall where they may. “There needs to be ease. There needs to be a comfortable chemistry. Chemistry is not something we should wait for or work on at the beginning,” she emphasized.

Part of the dating plan is establishing clear boundaries and deal breakers. “Any relationship that’s not fun and easy in the first month or six months is not worth pursuing,” Dr. Sophia told us. When people inevitably “fall away” in the dating process, don’t allow them to fall away completely. Dr. Sophia recommended keeping them close.

“Cultivate the people who are falling to the side as our friends, because we’re going to meet people that way, too,” she pointed out. This can be tricky for people who are naturally avoidant, but that’s exactly who Dr. Sophia’s dating plan is for: People who have such ingrained bad habits that they need a little help establishing new, healthy habits.

The dating plan ultimately encourages people to ask themselves one question: Do I feel important in this relationship? “That’s what all relationships boil down to,” Dr. Sophia explained. “‘Do I matter? Am I important?’”

If you can’t answer that question with 100% certainty, then it may be time to dive into your partner’s psyche — and your own.

Love Partner or Life Partner, or Both…….Which Relationship Name Feels Right For You?

Our primary intimate relationship can have many different names, titles, and descriptive meanings. Husband, wife, partner, life partner, spouse, and……Love Partner.

Love Partner is a title that implies deep love and connection, with an emphasis on the feelings experienced in the relationship. Couples who describe each other as love partners may even feel as if they are soul mates. For those of us who call our partner a ‘Love Partner’, the name, life partner typically does not fit. A life partner can be an old friend or even a spouse who we are not deeply connected to emotionally. Many people are married or in long-term relationships where the term life partner fits, but the deep emotional connection is not present, and the longing to be deeply close with each other is not necessarily felt. For those of us who feel as if we are in a love partner relationship, the term life partner can feel like a business partner relationship, and a relationship that is more focused on the daily tasks of living, rather than the daily experiences of deep emotional connection.

Love Partners can also share the ease of living, because the deep love and care are present. When couples find this type of ease and deep connection in relationship, amazing experiences can be shared together, because the intimacy travels into all parts of the relationship……..emotional connection, spiritual connection, intellectual connection, social connection, sexual connection, and all the other 12 Types of Intimacy.

The finding of a true Love Partner is a rare gift. There are millions of life partners who would be good matches for us, however, there are likely not many love partners, who we can deeply connect with, and vise-versa. When we are gifted to find ourselves in a Love Partner relationship, it is important to do our own personal work, so we can continue to show up and nurture the sacred space of our very special relationship.

For more information on how you can find your Love Partner relationship or how you can transform your current relationship into a Love Partner relationship, contact Dr. Sophia @ sophia@queencityhealthysex.com or sophia@bullcitypsychotherapy.com

The Power of Choosing Aloneness

As it turns out, one of the main feelings we typically try very hard not to feel, is one of our best and most effective pathways to true emotional freedom and wellbeing.

I am speaking about Loneliness or Chosen Aloneness.

When we step into loneliness or aloneness, we change the course of how this feeling affects us. If we accept loneliness and feel it fully, then eventually, we won’t feel the need to try and resist it. We try to resist feeling lonely, because it is such a difficult feeling to feel for most of us, until we let go and invite ourself into the feeling. There are many unhelpful ways we resist feeling lonely; addiction, disassociation, codependency, numbing out, technology, over or under eating, are just some ways we resist feeling loneliness.

When we allow ourselves to feel lonely, then follow it up with meditation, other grounding behaviors, or healthy connection with others, the feeling of loneliness loses its power over us, and we can allow it to be felt as it needs to organically. We are, in essence, building a tolerance for a normal feeling that we can learn to let come and go as it needs to, and rather than expending our energy to not feel a feeling, we can accept it, feel it, and use our energy to participate in healthy connection with ourselves and others.

Loneliness is a part of the feeling state of Grief, and as such, should be honored and felt, as much deep personal growth occurs in the deep Grief.

©Copyright Sophia Dorton Caudle, PhD, All Rights Reserved

The Love Killer of RIGIDITY

There are many ways we can withhold love. The withholding of love can look like avoidance, silence, anger, making jokes instead of feeling feelings, pretending everything is fine and not talking about tough topics, lack of affection, as well as a general detachment in relationships. The withholding of love is a ‘Love Killer’ over time. 

Another primary way withholding of love can show up is rigidity. Rigidity is a very harsh love killer, because it completely invalidates the other person in the relationship. For instance, a partner who digs his/her/their heels in repeatedly and refuses to budge is being rigid. Rigid partners do not typically discuss conflict, rather they tell others what to do and how things are going to be, or they avoid. Also, continued rigidity creates an impossible situation to work through. The deeper one is in rigidity, the less likely one can find a way out and choose a different way of being. The partner who is habitually rigid gets more deeply stuck into the trap of being rigid, therefore as time goes on, there is less likelihood that the rigid pattern will change. Rigidity becomes a familiar brain habit. 

Rigid people typically do not see, hear, or empathize with their partner. The partner must choose between herself, or she must abandon herself and be controlled in order to save the relationship. Rigidity is a lose-lose relationship pattern. The partner who experiences rigidity feels very disconnected from her partner, and this prolonged pattern can create an unfortunate natural consequence, called ‘killing love.’ Nothing says ‘you are not important and you don’t matter to me’ more than rigidity. 

In an intimate relationship, rigidity feels like painful abandonment being handed out by the one we love the most. It is excruciating not to be seen by our partner. This is especially harmful if it is a pattern. Over time, we can fall out of love with a rigid partner, because rigidity creates disconnection, pain, and it completely invalidates us as a human being in the relationship. 

Addiction creates a rigid brain. Recovery creates a pliable and flexible brain. Rigidity is one reason why it is so difficult to be in a relationship with an active addict. It is also important to know that even if one is in sobriety, rigidity can continue without a true recovery. A deep and True Recovery, however, can help us move away from rigid thinking and behavior into a place of being capable of giving and receiving care, comfort, safety, nurturing, affection, and LOVE. 

The Withholding Of Love

What is the withholding of love? Have you ever been in a relationship and your partner was
right next to you, and you felt completely alone? I have, and it felt absolutely miserable and
hopeless.

There are so many different ways we can withhold love. First, when we do not receive the care,
comfort, safety, nurturing, and affection that we needed in early childhood, not only are our
basic needs being withheld from us, but so is love. It is in the early years ages 0-3 that we learn
to withhold love. We learn to withhold love as a method of self protection from the emotional
and/or physical neglect or deprivation we experienced from our early caregivers. This does not
necessarily mean we experienced abuse or trauma, rather emotional neglect or deprivation is
expressed from most caregivers to small children in one way or another, and it is usually very
covert and happens in typical ‘healthy’ families.

As adults, we learn ways to withhold love that are the progression of ‘what we did not get’ in
early childhood, especially if we are avoidant in our primary relationships. Avoidance of
intimate connection, people, conversation, conflict, physical affection, or emotionally difficult
topics is a primary way the withholding of love presents in a primary relationship.

There are other more covert ways we may withhold love; some examples are not being
interested in your partner, not being willing to be supportive of your partner’s feelings, only
giving to your partner in ways that are easy for you, and not what they may want/need, not
being affectionate, blaming your partner for how you feel, being in active addiction, as well as
being a person who only stays on the surface of life and does not ‘go deep’ into intimacy with
others. Some ways you might hear covert withholding are, ‘I’m fine, everything’s fine’, ‘Well,
I’m sure it will work out for you at some point’, or,’ Let me tell you everything about my day.’
These comments may seem small, however they take their toll on a relationship, and create a
space that is not validating or affirming for the individuals or couple-ship to grow.

If you are reading this and you are wondering if you are withholding, this is the perfect moment
for you to take a deep dive into this really wonderful space and get to know yourself in a
deeper, more intimate manner. If you want to share more of yourself in your relationships, in a
healthy way, you can unlearn how you withhold, and you can learn how to participate more
deeply in relationships. Your first step is to find a therapist EXPERIENCED IN INTIMACY AND/OR
SEX THERAPY if you want to grow in your primary relationship.

If you are in a relationship with a withholding partner, I see you. You ARE important, and you
DO matter. Please find a therapist WITH TRAINED EXPERIENCE IN INTIMACY and begin the
process of evaluating yourself and your relationship, either with or without your partner, in
individual and/or couples therapy. When we do our own work and healing FIRST, and we learn
to love ourselves, it makes the process of evaluating the relationship easier.

May you appreciate and enjoy your journey work.

A Reflection on the Atlanta Spa Shootings

Dear Clients, Colleagues, and Community Members,

I am writing this post in the aftermath of the Atlanta, GA, spa shootings. As a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist & Supervisor (CSAT-S), I have considered whether or not to weigh in on this horrible tragedy since sex addiction has been mentioned in the media, and at this point, I have decided to share my thoughts.

First, I’d like to clearly state that, as a therapist and a woman in recovery for over two decades, these are my thoughts, and I speak only for myself. I do not represent any other therapists or persons in recovery from sex addiction.

Sex addiction is a very real addiction that creates much pain for the addicted person, as well as those around the addict. The ‘debate’ regarding whether sex addiction is a valid addiction has long been refuted with numerous peer-reviewed research studies that have been the focus of many of my academic colleagues for the past two decades. The World Health Organization in 2018 validated sex addiction as an actual disease, and it will be called Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the mental health workers’ primary resource in regards to diagnosing patients and filing insurance.

The debate is over. Sex addiction exists, and it is a very real addiction. Sex addiction is not glamorous or shiny, rather it is insidious and disgusting.

The Atlanta spa shootings are a horrible tragedy. Asian hate crimes are unacceptable. Killing innocent people is unacceptable. Period.

However, please do not believe any incorrect media information implying that the shooter acted only due to his sex addiction. Sex addiction is not a powerful enough stand-alone diagnosis for an addict to commit murder. This shooter had other severe long-term mental health issues he had been struggling with.

Sex addiction is an isolating disease, where the addict harms him/herself by engaging in dangerous sexual behaviors that keep the addict emotionally imprisoned and disconnected from authentic human connection. Oftentimes, sex addicts intentionally inflict harm on their own bodies, even escalating to suicide because the shame is too much to bear.

It is too simple to blame sex addiction in the Atlanta spa shootings. There are many other social, institutional, and mental health issues involved in this tragedy that deserve our attention too. We do not know exactly why the shooter turned his attention outside of himself to blame massage spa workers, rather than take responsibility himself for his sexually addictive behaviors, but unfortunately, he did blame others. Blaming others is not part of addiction recovery. Whatever ‘support’ this man was receiving clearly did not address his mental status, which is what we mental health professionals check at each visit. Mental status determines a person’s safety and ability to engage in reality, and this was definitely missed, if in fact, he was in treatment, or working with mental health professionals. Again, the point is that sex addiction in and of itself is not a determining factor that would ‘cause’ someone to commit murder, other diagnoses and mental health issues were part of this man’s mental status and decision-making.

As a society, we do need to become more aware of and educated about what sex addiction is and is not. Sex addiction in our younger generations is becoming addicted to pornography, with the average age of exposure being 8 years old. Sex addiction is horrendous betrayal trauma inflicted time and again to a spouse. Sex addiction is the lack of honesty and inability to be intimate in a partnered relationship. Sex addiction is not fun. Sex addiction does not feel good. Sex addiction is shaming, depressing, and a hopeless feeling of never being loved.

As a CSAT-S and a grateful woman in recovery, I am hopeful that we can turn this tragedy into a teachable moment of what sex addiction is and how prevalent it is in our world, in the hope of teaching and modeling healthy and safe sexual and intimate relationships.

 

Grief and the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Sophia Caudle, PhD

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered everyone all around the world at the same time. The most common feelings that people are reporting are fear, anxiety, and loneliness, oftentimes with no clear pathway to feeling grounded again due to the uncertain nature of the pandemic’s timeline. Unacknowledged grief is also being triggered for most people during the pandemic. For example, a 22 year old male client has been experiencing flare-ups with his OCD, and his generalized anxiety and sex addiction have been triggered since the beginning of the pandemic. However, after guiding his therapeutic work into his deep, original grief, which he describes as not feeling connected or nurtured by his parents, he is now more effectively understanding and processing his grief, and his symptoms referenced above have drastically reduced. I have seen this pattern with many clients who experience reduced daily triggers after digging deep into their original grief work.

When grief is triggered, especially when we are unaware of our grief being triggered, it can create an intensity attached to the feeling we are currently identifying, because it traces back to our original grief. Original Grief, copyrighted by grief researcher and psychotherapist Sophia Caudle, is the perceived awareness of our earliest emotional woundings©, and when this gets tapped into, whatever we are currently dealing with seems exponentially more severe. Original grief typically is formed ages 0-5, when we are most vulnerable to being shaped by life’s circumstances. The foundational emotion attached to the pandemic is grief, and grief, if not acknowledged, felt, and addressed, will continue to trigger the more easily identifiable emotions such as fear, anxiety, depression, and whatever other feelings and reactions typically present for people in a crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of how understanding the different types of grief, especially original grief, can be helpful to us when we experience current daily triggers, because our deep grief awareness can better inform the tools we implement to ground ourselves.

The most easily identifiable grief the COVID-19 pandemic is creating for people is traditional grief. Traditional grief is the grief we feel when someone dies. Traditional grief, for many of us, is the only type of grief of which we are aware. Most of us are only aware of acknowledging grief for ourselves or others in the event of death and dying, and the biggest fear about COVID-19 is the fear and possibility of getting sick and that either we or a loved one will die. According to the COVID-19 tracking website Worldometer, as of September 2020, almost 188,000 Amercians have died from COVID-19, and there have been approximately 664,000 deaths around the world, excluding the United States. When we see the numbers of COVID-19 related deaths around the globe, it is easy to become overwhelmed by fear and anxiety. It is also easy to think if we or a loved one contracts COVID-19, death is inevitable.

Another type of grief that is widely prevalent during the time of COVID-19 is ambiguous grief. Ambiguous Grief© (Caudle, 2018) is the grief felt when a relationship ends or when we lose a loved one in our life who is still living. Ambiguous grief is also felt when we lose something important to us, or when we have the awareness of something important we never had. According to Pauline Boss, the principal theorist of the concept of ambiguous loss, the grief felt by ambiguous grief can be ongoing because there is no closure as there is in traditional grief. During the pandemic, ambiguous grief has certainly been ongoing for many of us. Most of us have lost relationships, lost in-person connections, and lost our ability to move around our communities. Most people do not realize the primary emotion being triggered is ambiguous grief, and typically, if we do not know what we are feeling and where it comes from, then we can not effectively address it. Instead, people may believe they are feeling anxious, scared, or lonely when in reality their deep grief is being triggered and the felt awareness is anxiety and fear. Also, since there is no real sense of when the pandemic will be over, and there is no sense of a projected closure date, ambiguous grief is constantly present and creating ongoing insecurities for many.

There are many types of ambiguous grief being triggered by the pandemic. The ambiguous grief I am seeing most is the grief felt from the loss of daily interactions with others due to physical distancing. This has created a sense of feeling isolated and lonely for so many people. So, many of us are feeling ambiguous grief due to the loss of in-person relationship interactions. The interactions we are missing can be either significant relationships or random interactions with people we do not know well at all. For instance, a simple conversation with the checkout person at the grocery store or a simple chat with a stranger in a park can serve as a type of spontaneous connection, and for many of us, these interactions are not occurring. Live human interaction is sorely missed during this time, and our brains are noticing the loss of connection. As John Bowlby the renowned attachment theorist acknowledged, humans are hard-wired to connect, and the pandemic has removed person to person connection for many people. Some people who live alone or are in other isolating living circumstances have not had a face-to-face conversation or felt a hug from another person in five months or more, and this is tapping into their deepest sense of original grief aloneness. For instance, my client Charles has not left his apartment in over eight months due to his fear around COVID-19 and his other health concerns. Charles lives alone and has not attended in person Alcoholics Anonymous meetings since the pandemic began. Charles has also not experienced human touch in over eight months, and he describes feeling the effects of that unfortunate reality as ‘constant loneliness and depression’. Charles is experiencing deep grief around the loss of his ways to connect with others in a face to face manner.

Another type of ambiguous grief most of us are feeling is the sadness around the loss of our ‘normal’ way of living life. For example, leaving our homes to go do anything; grocery shop, work, school, spiritual gatherings, and socializing are all activities we used to be able to do without thinking about our health being in jeopardy, and now either these ways of living have been stripped from us, or we must prepare for our safety in order to do them at all. So many regular activities have been lost to us since the onset of the pandemic: marriages, funerals, graduations, birthdays, going away celebrations, sports, competitions of most kinds, and many types of intimacy. Most of us took many of life’s daily activities for granted before the pandemic. Now we are feeling ambiguous grief because much of what we used to do is not possible at this time. We are feeling a loss of our freedom to connect and move about in society.

Physical distancing during COVID-19 has forced us to learn how to have intentional connections with others rather than spontaneous connections if we want to feel emotionally healthy as well as maintain healthy relationships. Intentional connections during COVID-19 are exactly what they sound like, ways of meeting with others that we discuss and agree upon as related to social connection, safety, and virus prevention. So, rather than communicating and deciding what fun activity we are going to do, we are actually planning with whom, as well as how, we want to connect in a safety-related manner. COVID-19 has forced many people to make decisions about who we want in our inner circle of social connections. People who are being responsible and observing CDC recommendations during COVID-19 have chosen a short list of friends they can trust to socialize with during this time. Some relationships are blossoming and some are deteriorating. Living in isolation is difficult for many, and not everyone can handle conscious connection for safety purposes. For many of us, the removal of spontaneous interactions has required us to pivot and create new ways of connecting. Zoom, FaceTime, Skype, and many other platforms have been utilized frequently during the pandemic in efforts to connect. For those who have been able to transition into intentional connection during COVID-19, most are doing fine, but for people who are stuck in their original grief and not knowing how to create intentional connections, many are not doing well. A recent publication by Cullen, Gulati, and Kelly in QJM: An International Journal of Medicine predicts heightened isolation-related mental health impacts like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress, which have already been identified during the pandemic in China. Further, literature from Jiang Du and colleagues with the Drug Abuse Treatment Department at the Shanghai Mental Health Center suggest that those with substance use disorders and addictions are particularly sensitive to the stress and potential for maladaptive coping styles during periods of isolation with the pandemic. Finally, relationship issues and domestic violence are trending upward globally following stay-at-home orders, quarantines, and social isolation, according to research published by Brad Boserup, Mark McKenney, and Adel Elkbui in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

As noted, people in addiction recovery are especially triggered during the pandemic because the shelter in place regulations require disconnection, and addiction recovery is about learning how to connect. One of the main components of addiction recovery is to learn how to have healthy relationships and connect deeply with others, and when in-person therapy sessions, group therapy, 12 Step Meetings, etc. are removed from the recovery plan on an in-person basis, it can be difficult for people to pivot and learn connection via teletherapy or video meetings, especially when connecting was a challenge before the pandemic. Some people in recovery have transitioned nicely to video meetings and others have not, and for those who have not adjusted easily, recovery may be at a stand still, or possibly even in a relapse. Fortunately, some people in addiction recovery have used the extra time to do more recovery work, more self care, etc. while acknowledging their grief, and this has provided an opportunity for further growth. Grief awareness and utilizing recovery tools to intentionally connect are critical to staying in sobriety and recovery. I facilitate two meetings on the largest global addiction recovery website In The Rooms, www.intherooms.com, one meeting is Codependency, Grief, and Relationships, and this meeting has doubled in its weekly attendance due to COVID-19. Also, I created the Coronavirus Support Meeting every Monday on In The Rooms, and for eight months, we have had over 100 attendees participate. In fact, the entire website, In The Rooms, has doubled in membership since the pandemic began. People in recovery are trying to find various methods of connection, even though in person meetings are not possible at this time.

I believe that the different types of grief created by the pandemic, such as traditional and ambiguous grief, are also connecting back to people’s original grief, and therefore increasing the intensity of emotions. As stated previously, this author identified original grief as the grief felt with the perceived awareness of our earliest emotional woundings©. I believe that whenever we feel highly activated or charged, our original grief is being tapped into by whatever current trigger is occurring in the moment.

Jaak Panksepp’s research in his text Affective Neuroscience states that grief and social bonding are related together in the mammalian brain. A lack of social bonding, or feeling of loneliness, is also what we feel when we feel grief. Grief is the experienced and felt loss of a lack of social bonding. Essentially all grief is connected not only in our brains, but also in our feelings and in our bodies. For instance, a current feeling related to grief, sadness, or aloneness is going to track back to our original grief and therefore make today’s feelings feel more intense or charged. In this way, original grief is being tapped into today, during the pandemic, because at some point, we are feeling fear, anxiety, aloneness, and/or loss. And, because the trigger is safety-related and there is a possibility of sickness or death, the depth of the grief is beyond today’s situation and actually connects back to the deepest and most disturbing grief we have ever experienced. Stated differently, our original grief is being tapped into daily due to the pandemic’s daily triggering of fear, loneliness, and uncertainty.

A specific example of how daily triggers can connect back to one’s original grief is in the case of abandonment. During the pandemic, if one is feeling isolated and lonely, and original grief is abandonment from parents or other primary attachment figures, then the current feeling of loneliness will connect back to early childhood abandonment and the feeling will feel more intense. This can also be the case if physical and/or emotional safety is a part of our original grief, because both are being triggered due to COVID-19. As an example, one of my clients, Colleen, experienced abandonment from her father in her early teen years, and her experience was horrid, including lack of food and utilities. Also, her mother was so distraught after Colleen’s father left home that she abandoned Colleen emotionally, so Colleen has always reported feeling deep aloneness. During the pandemic, Colleen’s abandonment schema has been triggered again, because of the constant isolation. Colleen feels like she has been abandoned and forgotten by the world. In her treatment, we are using this time to dive deep into her original grief, which she reports as, ‘I do not matter to anyone, not even my parents, who are supposed to love me’. Treating Collen’s original grief is also soothing her current sadness about feeling alone and forgotten during the pandemic, because both are connected together in her social bonding neural pathway. Conversely, if we only addressed Collen’s current feelings about COVID-19 and loneliness, we would not be entirely addressing all that affects her, because her original grief would still continue to be tapped into, thus it would serve as an unknown trigger for loneliness. It is in this way that knowing our original grief can be a very empowering process to identify and treat not only our foundational aloneness, but also the current triggers we experience as adults.

The pandemic is certainly a trigger for most of us during this unprecedented and difficult time in our world. If we can be aware of some of the deeper feelings underneath, like the various kinds of grief, then we can be more self aware and take active steps to healing our ultimate trigger of original grief. The deep grief awareness of original grief can empower us to heal not only our foundational pain, but also the current triggers of today.

The Generational Grief of Black Americans

I study grief and the effects it has on people. There are lots of different kinds of grief: traditional grief, when a loved one passes; ambiguous grief, the loss of a loved one who is still living; and original grief which is our earliest and deepest emotional wounding.

I have found that most negative feelings and their emotional expressions can be explained by looking through the lens of grief. For example, the emotional expression of anger can oftentimes be unconscious grief, which has not been identified or processed. Or, the common emotion of shame is also typically unconscious and unprocessed grief.

When I witness the racial and social injustice of Black Americans, I see their painful and ongoing experience as generational grief, which has been allowed to continue for far too long. Generational grief is the passing down of grief from one generation to another. Black Americans experienced unfathomable grief after being stolen from their home in Africa and forced into slavery, and this grief has been handed down from one generation to another, because even though slavery was abolished, inequality and injustice is still allowed to happen. True equality can not happen until social and systemic racism is abolished. For hundreds of years, Black Americans have been carrying the burden of grief from generations prior, and every time an unjust death occurs to one of my Black or Brown brothers and sisters, the burden becomes heavier and more unbearable. The marching, protesting, and anguished cries for systemic reform are all expressions of grief not only for George Floyd, but for every unjust action ever committed to Black Americans, traced back 400 years.

If we can consider grieving the loss of a loved one as an expected response to their passing, should we also not be able to consider that Black Americans are grieving not only the loss of countless lives, but also the loss of living an equal, just, and safe life that has never been allowed, due to the systemic oppression, generationally experienced in our country for peoples of color.

Grief has many faces of expression, and right now, the face of the Black community’s collective grief is George Floyd. Let the experience of grief unite us all into creating an equal, safe, and just life for all Americans of color, specifically, the same life of opportunity that we White Americans already experience.

If you identify with generational grief, or if you are feeling grief as a response to the injustices that are still allowed to occur to Black Americans, here are some tips for moving through grief:

1. Acknowledge that what you are feeling is grief

For example, feeling traditional grief and sadness about the death of George Floyd or feeling ambiguous grief for so many opportunities not available for so many African Americans, based solely on their skin color.

2. Give yourself permission to feel grief

Cry, give hugs, receive hugs, support others, practice self care

3. Allow others to feel grief

Be emotionally available to support someone while they are feeling the pain of grief

4. Understand that grief is a very deep emotion that will be triggered again, but know that if you can identify your feeling as grief, you can allow it to be felt and move through it easier than if you do not have deep grief awareness

5. Practice self care and be gentle with yourself after feeling grief and allowing it to process

6. Practice meditation, which will allow uncomfortable feelings, such as grief, to be tolerated and felt

7. Practice effective re-parenting: Re-parenting is helpful, because as adults, it is our responsibility to re-parent ourselves in healthy ways if we are feeling difficult feelings. Healthy re-parenting activities include, using a weighted blanket for security while telling oneself soothing phrases of comfort and/or coloring in mindful coloring books.

8. Contact a counselor who specializes in grief for deep grief processing work or to attend a grief workshop, or support group

For more information about Dr. Caudle’s Grief Workshops, please contact Dr. Sophia Caudle at 919-382-0288 or Sophia@bullcitypsychotherapy.com

Support For Trans Teens

Things are really hard right now! All of us are grappling with abrupt changes to our routines, habits, and ways we connect to others. If you are a parent or guardian of a transgender teenager, it is possible that these shifts feel magnified and you maybe concerned about supporting your teen. Perhaps you have noticed some changes in behavior, such as sleeping too much or two little, loss of interest in what they used to like, or you are simply concerned about the isolation. What we do know, is that trans youth are more likely to be diagnosed with depression than their cisgender (i.e., non-transgender) peers, and experience up to three times the rate of suicidal thoughts of cisgender youth (Reisner et al., 2015).

The good news is, there are plenty of things that will help buffer and support teens as they grow into adulthood, such as helping the teen strengthen their self esteem, connecting with an affirming and supportive trusted adult, and connecting them with community-specific resources.

Self esteem is an important factor and internal support that teens can develop and strengthen in order to stay healthy mentally. Ways to help foster healthy self esteem in your teen include offering sincere praise for their efforts as well as their accomplishments, and to find ways of encouraging the teen’s own ability to make decisions and explore their talents.

Another protective support that we know helps transgender teenagers, is an accepting and affirming relationship with a trusted adult. That means, if you’re reading this, and you have a trans teen in your life, congratulations! You have the power to make a positive impact on that teen’s wellbeing.

In particular, “Transgender college students reported that support and acceptance by family improved their mental health and contributed to a positive sense of self; the types of support that were perceived as positive were asking questions to understand transgender experience & assisting with/affirming participants’ transition” (Johns et al. 2018). This may look like approaching your teen with a respectful curiosity, and inviting conversations around what different experiences are like for your teen.

That being said, it is normal if there are some things your teen may feel more comfortable discussing with peers than with a parent. Connecting transgender teens with community specific services is a wonderful support. Corliss et al. note, “transgender youth discussed how workshops and support groups for transgender people increased feeling of social support and added comfort with their identity” (2007). Groups where teens are able to connect with people who are similar to them, increases their comfort with their own identities and decreases their sense of isolation.

One such group is the Group for Transgender and Gender Questioning Teens, which is held virtually on Saturdays at 3:30. This group would be a wonderful fit for any transgender or gender questioning teens who are looking to develop more skills to handle the stresses of life, or who would like to work on their identity and becoming more comfortable in it.

These are just a few methods to help support your transgender teenager. For more information, or to sign up for the group, please contact Ashley Parks at ashley@bullcitypsychotherapy.com

 

References 

Johns, Michelle Marie et al. “Protective Factors Among Transgender and Gender Variant Youth: A Systematic Review by Socioecological Level.” The journal of primary prevention vol. 39,3 (2018): 263-301. doi:10.1007/s10935-018-0508-9

Corliss HL, Belzer M, Forbes C, Wilson EC. An evaluation of service utilization among male to female transgender youth: Qualitative study of a clinic-based sample. Journal of LGBT Health Research. 2007;3(2):49–61.

Reisner S.L., Vetters, R., Leclerc, M., Zaslow, S., Wolfrum, S., Shumer, D., and Mimiaga, M.J. Mental health of transgender youth in care at an adolescent urban community health center: a matched retrospective cohort study. J Adolesc Health. 2015 Mar; 56(3):274-9.

 

Ambiguous Grief During the Covid Pandemic

covid grief bull city psychotherapy

The Covid-19 Pandemic has really forced many of us to feel grief due to all kinds of triggers. Grief is a feeling most commonly associated with the death of a loved one, however there are several other important types of grief for us to be aware of, if we want to increase our self awareness and be able to care for ourselves emotionally.

Ambiguous Grief is defined as the loss of someone who is still living, the loss of a relationship, and/or the awareness of losing something we have had, or never had, such as a safe childhood, (Caudle, 2018). The Covid pandemic has created not only much too much traditional grief of losing loved ones to Covid, but also countless scenarios of ambiguous grief due to our changing way of life.

The most impactful change in our world during this time, has been the necessity of social or physical distancing in order not to spread Covid. The isolation of physical distancing has created a sense of deep loneliness for many people. Our brains are hard-wired to connect with others, and for many, this connection needs to happen in person, rather than via technology. Depression, anxiety, addictions, other mental health issues have increased for many people during this time, due to not getting enough connection in the ways that work for them. I prefer to use the term ‘physical distancing’ rather than social distancing, because what we are really doing is disconnecting physically from those whom we do not other wise live with; we do not have to disconnect socially, in fact, we are encouraged to connect socially in safe ways, such as via Zoom, facebook, facetime, safe outdoor connects, etc. In fact, social connections are important now more than ever, because we are not having regular daily connections with others.

If we look deeply, we have been grieving for our former way of life these past few months, because our way of moving through the world has been drastically changed. We are not socializing in person as much, we are not working in offices with others, our kids are not attending school in person, public places to assemble, such as places of worship, parks, and restaurants have been closed, etc., the list goes on. The ambiguous grief of no longer having daily connections with others is something very real to be acknowledged, honored, and felt.

Grief is a very common feeling that oftentimes gets overlooked, and it seems to be at the foundation of much of what we oftentimes suffer, such as anxiety, depression, addiction, etc. When we have deep Grief Awareness, we have a connection to the very deepest parts of ourselves and what experiences and feelings cause us so much pain. When we have grief awareness and effective grief processing tools, we have the power to honor our grief, feel it, and move forward.

Stay tuned for more posts about Ambiguous Grief During Covid.

To be a part of Dr. Caudle’s Grief Workshops, please email her at Sophia@bullcitypsychotherapy.com or call 919-382-0288.